Civic Center Memorial For Those Who Comitted Suicide Because Of The Iraq War

During the Democratic National Convention in Boston, the parents of Jeffrey Lucey, a U.S. soldier who killed himself after returning home from military duty in Iraq, spoke publicly for the first time on Democracy Now!

Lucey signed up for the Marine Reserves straight out of high school. In February 2003, one month before the invasion, he was shipped out to Iraq. He was deployed there for five months, during which he fought in the battle of Nasiriyah. He returned to the U.S. later that year.

A few months after his return, Jeffrey's parents, Kevin and Joyce, began noticing signs of what they later came to know as post-traumatic stress syndrome. In late May 2004, they had Jeffrey involuntarily committed to a military veteran's hospital after he ignored his parents' and sister, Debbie's pleas to seek help. The hospital discharged him after a few days.

Three weeks later on June 22nd, Jeffrey Lucey took his own life. He was 23 years old. His father, Kevin came home to find his son had hung himself with a hose in the cellar of their house. The dog tags of two Iraqi prisoners he said he was forced to shoot unarmed, lay on his bed.

Shortly after his death, Kevin and Joyce Lucey joined us on the program to talk about their son. After the broadcast, we continued our conversation with them.

Read more and listen to interview:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/11/145205

What Jeff Lucey told his family about his time in Iraq as a Marine reservist made the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib pale in comparison.

His father, Kevin Lucey, remembers his son's story: Two unarmed Iraqi men had stood before Jeff in the desert. They were presumably prisoners.

"Pull the f***ing trigger, Lucey!" someone had shouted. His gun was shaking, but he did look into the eyes of one of the guys. He said it was a young guy like him. The kid was scared. Jeff was wondering if this was somebody's son, somebody's brother, somebody's father, somebody's friend.

The order to shoot came again. Jeff obeyed.

He was about five feet away. The blood splattered all over. And then he shot the second one. One was in the eye, and one was in the throat.

Jeff told his family he watched the men die. Then he removed their dog tags and later brought them back home with him.

For Jeff's family, there seemed no question that the young man, angry and anguished, was telling the truth. And if they did have any lingering doubts about the ordeal Jeff went through in Iraq, they disappeared on June 22, 2004, when, nearly a year after coming home from the war, Jeff Lucey hanged himself with a garden hose in his family's basement in Belchertown, Mass.

Jeff Lucey was a lance corporal in the 1st Truck Platoon of the 6th Motor Transport Battalion, a small, tightly knit Marine Reserve unit based in New Haven, Conn. The 6th Motors, as they call themselves, drove truck convoys for three months in Iraq at the start of the war. The unit returned home in July 2003 intact -- no deaths, no serious injuries. To many of them, Jeff's suicide was the first casualty. They were saddened and angry. But they didn't want to talk about it with anyone outside the Marine Corps.

When a few Massachusetts newspapers and the foreign policy blog This Is Rumor Control began speculating about events in Iraq that might have led Jeff Lucey to take his own life, the Marine Corps Reserve Public Affairs Office dismissed the stories. "There was nothing we found to substantiate any of the claims," Capt. Patrick B. Kerr told the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

The denial came just four days into the Marine Corps' own investigation. Maj. Jon Woodcock, who was assigned to head the inquiry, had spoken to only a handful of people and was scheduled to continue work for another two months. Already, however, contradictions were emerging.

Read More
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heart/lucey/

JEFFREY LUCEY is not a name that will not soon be forgotten by the more than 100 people who attended a memorial service for him at Holyoke Community College (HCC) in Western Massachusetts. Lucey, a Marine veteran of the Iraq war and a student at the college, committed suicide on June 22. He was 23.

As his father Kevin said at the memorial, Jeff’s death, while not officially listed as such, is another casualty showing the human costs of the war. Lucey joined the Marine Reserves at 18 because, as his parents told Amy Goodman of the left-wing radio program Democracy Now! he wanted to get the training and earn money for college.

He was called to active duty with the 6th Motor Transport Battalion in early 2003. By February, he was in Kuwait. One day after he celebrated his 22nd birthday, the invasion of Iraq began. Trained as a clerical specialist, he was reassigned to serve as a driver.

Read More
http://www.socialistworker.org/2004-2/514/514_02_VetSuicide.shtml